Looking Back
by Iniysa
Summary: Part 1 in the Kids Series, this story complete. Future Story. Jim's missing.


Looking Back  
By: Lauren Freeman  
Part 1: in the KIDS series.  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own The Sentinel, and am not making any money off of them. All other charticters are mine. :0)  
  
Note: Every part in this story is a different story. I am writing more everday. So read the stories, they are complete. :)  
  
Note 2: Future Story  
  
Looking Back   
Part 1 in the KIDS series.  
By: Lauren Freeman  
  
It's been 10 years since he left, I could not believe it! He had a wife and two kids that loved him. Twins, Amy and Jonny, six year olds, Jim didn't even leave a note. Mary was depressed, three months after Jim left she asked me to take care of the kids for a while. No hesitation, I said yes. They had always called me uncle Blair, I used to be at there house all the time, helping Jim with his senses and watching for any sign that the twins may be Sentinels, and well being the ever-loving uncle. Two years later, I found myself married, and legal guardians of the 8-year-old twins. I remember the day they came to me and asked if I was there new daddy. I felt very uncomfortable, and Samantha and I had a long talk, eventually decided to let them call us whatever they wanted. At first I did not like them calling me daddy, since they were my best-friends children. But I got used to it.   
  
Mary died of heart problems a year after Jim left; I think she died of broken heart myself. I might of lost it if I had not had Amy and Jonny to keep me grounded. Then when Sam came into my life, I started to let go, but I never stopped wondering. And I always had my contacts, which traveled all over the world keeping an eye out for Jim. The day after the twins turned 9, we found out that Sam was pregnant! Nine months later Amy and Jonny met their new baby sister, Lilly. The twins were 10 when their Sentinel abilities started to surface. They had both been grounded to the room for three days. It was on the third day when they started complaining that the lights in their rooms were too bright, that Lilly was giving them a headache. Even though Lilly was downstairs on the other side of the house. I had taught Sam about Sentinels after we got married, and taught her the signs we should look out for in the twins. I was working at the museum when I got a call from Sam, she told me to come home immediately when my shift was over. I did of course, and soon we were helping the kids with their new abilities. Thank God it was summer break! By the time school started again, the kids had it down pat. They are very fast learners. I made sure they were in the same classes, that way they can keep each other from zoning.   
  
The next year Sam and I decided to homeschool the kids. There was no way we were going to be able to talk the middle school and high school into keeping them in the same classes. Plus, with Amy's skills in writing, and Jonny's in Math, they would not have been able to stay in the same classes anyways. So we started to homeschool them. We somehow managed to arrange work around schooling. There Sentinel abilities only progressed. Sam and I quickly learned that calling the kids down for supper or for anything, only took a low voice. We let the kids choose the activities they wanted to do, outside the house. They both had to choose something for P.E. Amy started in Gymnastics, but soon decided that swimming was her thing. So she joined our community's year around swim team. Jonny loved baseball, so we got him on our communities baseball team. I was surprised he did not go for football. Sam and I were sure he would, since Jim had seemed to love the sport as a kid. But he said that he wasn't keen on getting tacked every time he got the ball.   
  
We wanted our kids to have as much public interaction as possible, so we signed the kid up in scouts. We quickly learned that there were a lot of other homeschoolers in our community and we started a program for all the homeschoolers to get together once a week at the local community center, and soon a small handful of kids turned into over 200, coming to just hangout with there friends. Teams were built and suddenly we had a homeschool baseball, basketball, swimming and hockey team. They also had an acting group! By then the twins were 13 and in the thick of things. Both were on the Hockey team, Amy on the swimming team and in acting, and Jonny in baseball. Soon the teams were playing other teams all over Colorado! We all lead very busy lives. And still do! Amy and Jonny are now 16 and in the 11th grade. Lilly is 6 and we now have her in the 2ed grade. We had decided to homeschool Lilly too. When she turned 5, we put her in girl scouts, and gymnastics. Unlike Amy, Lilly loved gymnastics from the very first day. Amy, kept swimming, but slowly started writing more.   
  
Amy wrote a children's book to read to the younger kids at the Saturday Home schooling get together. Well unbeknownst to us, one of the children's moms is a publisher. Last week, Amy's book was published. She announced yesterday that she is going to be a writer. She is still a girl scout, and is working on her Gold Award. Jonny is ever the ladies man. Sam and I are crossing our fingers, hoping that he will have more luck with women then Jim had. Nothing against Mary, it's the before Mary that I'm talking about. Jonny has gone far in Baseball. He has helped his team win the state championship. He got to meet professional baseball players, and recruiters. This got him extremely excited, what really peeked his interest was the Air Force recruiter. This got Sam and I a bit worried. Sure, the twins have become experts in hiding their skills, and controlling them, but what if he let it slip once, what if the military found out? What if he zoned while in a combat situation? Nether of them have zoned since they were 12, but they have never had to deal with gunfire, and bombs. But his protect his tribe instincts came through, and we ended up getting him a spot in the local high school's JROTC Air Force program. Soon, Jonny had his life planned out as well. And the Air Force has been keeping track of him. They are very excited that he will be getting his Eagle soon in Boy Scouts.   
  
The whole family knows three languages now. Amy and Jonny expressed the interest in learning Spanish at the age of 12, well if we were going to teach them Spanish, then we had to learn it ourselves. They say that a child learns language best before there 5. Well, Lilly was no exception. We would be speaking to each other in Spanish, and Lilly would speak right along with us. Even though she was only 3. Two years later Amy and Jonny were board with Spanish, and since our 5 year old Lilly was enjoying trying to do everything her brother and sister were doing, declared in Spanish no less that she was board of the language too. So we all started learning French. That one was a bit harder to learn. But a year later the whole family had it down pat. Poor Lilly, 6 years old already knows three languages, she used to speak all three at once. We quickly started teaching her what language was what, and she learned that when she was out in public, if she wanted the majority of the others to understand what she was saying, she needed to speak English.   
  
When Amy and Jonny were 14, Simon retired from the police force, in Cascade, and decided he did not get to see enough of his godchildren, so he moved all the way to Colorado, found himself a nice apartment just three blocks from us. All the kids, looked forward to his yearly visits, and constantly wrote letters to him, when he still lived in Cascade. Now he likes to come over and help in teaching them during the day. Though most of the time, I think they just like to listen to tales of his life as a cop.   
  
Of course everything has not been pure joy like I have written it. This is life! Everything that I have written about has happened. But both twins have been grounded countless of times. Amy started developing Jim's attitude problem when she was only 9, like her Sentinel abilities, it has only progressed since. She spends a little more time in her room then her brother. Up until Jonny decided he wanted to join the Air Force, Jonny would stay out past his curfew, and liked to take lessons from his twin sister in talking back. It was all I could do, when Lilly, who still wants to be just like her siblings, started talking back too, and repeating the bad words that occasionally slipped out of everyone's mouths. But Lilly is a quick learner, and she decided that like her siblings, she did not like the taste of soap. She quickly went to tattling whenever certain bad words slipped out in any language.   
  
Sam and I both still have our jobs. Sam works for a major company, she builds computer programs. She is so high in the ranks at her job, she was able to talk her company into letting her work at home, and talk to others via web-cam. I work part time at the local history museum, and teach two classes at Air Force Academy. HA! Don't ask how I got that job! I still end up with plenty of time at home, helping teach the kids. So now Jim has been gone for 10 years. We made sure that Amy and Jonny know about him, and that he is a Sentinel. Amy stated that she hates him, and hopes she never sees him. We have tried to talk to her about it, and tell her that Jim really was a great man. But she refuses to listen as of yet. Whenever his name comes up, she leaves the room. Jonny on the other hand just wants to understand why he left. I can't help him with that I don't know either. I just hope Jim is okay. Sam and I have come to the conclusion that Jonny has a bit of a grudge against Jim too. When we asked him why he wanted to join the Air Force and not the Army, he told us he did not like the Army, that they don't produce very nice men. At first we didn't understand this, as far as we could see, the men in the Army were just like the once in the Air Force. Then we looked into it further, and Jim suddenly got in the picture. When the kids were 12, they had both decided to change their last name from Ellison to Sandburg. At first Sam and I were very against this, we tried to talk them out of it, but they refused. They did not let a day go by that they did not bug us about it. Finally a year later, we caved in. We had their last names hyphenated to Ellison/Sandburg. But on every paper they write they leave the Ellison out. They were doing this even before they asked us to get to the proper authorities to make it their legal names. On Amy's children's book, under author it say's: Amy Sandburg, and in the about the author section in the back, it say's nothing about Jim, or her mom. Though they won't admit it, I think there mad at Mary for sending them away. We tried to tell them, that she was sick, and could not take care of them, but they are stubborn, just like both Mary and Jim. So we respected this decision and went on. And that has been our life so far. What the future holds, well we will be there, and we will hold strong. 


End file.
